Angel investor Paul Graham
apparently left a comment on a Hacker News
poll denying that the tech industry is in a bubble, and
contrasting the current situation with the dot-com run-up in the
late 1990s.

Graham is the main force behind Y Combinator, which offers small
amounts of money and mentoring to many startups. Recently,
investors Yuri Milner and Ron Conway offered every Y Combinator
company
an additional $150,000, sparking talk of a
bubble in early stage valuation.

The poll asked whether we're in a tech bubble and asked to hear
Graham's comments. He replied:

I was here in the
Valley for the original Bubble, and the situation now is nothing
like that was. Back then people were saying there was a "new
economy" driven by the Internet, and that productivity was going
to go up like a step function, which justified higher p/e ratios
for any company that could claim to be a participant. If you had
money to invest you felt like you had to have most of it in the
stock market, because money parked in bonds would miss out on all
this growth that was coming.

Back in the 90s I was sure there
was a bubble happening, and was notorious for telling everyone to
sell. And yet I remember that even I thought it was dangerous to
have money sitting in bonds. I don't think that now, and I don't
think anyone else does either.

What's happening now is a lot more
localized. A few professional investors are paying higher
valuations for startups than they were a few years ago. But the
number of participants and the amounts of money moving around are
both very small compared to the 90s. Plus the companies are
better. In the 90s, it was the dumb leading the dumb:
smooth-talking MBAs were raising money from hapless LPs and
investing it in startups run by other smooth-talking MBAs. Now
it's Yuri Milner investing in a company run by Mark
Zuckerberg.